Chapter 216: In Los Angeles; Very Good Use of a Bed

Saturday, May 14, 2005 (Continued)

The limo dropped us off at one end of Rodeo Drive. I had come fully prepared, $20,000 in one jacket pocket and a paperback book in the other, as I'd had a feeling that I'd need a distraction and that there wouldn't be any science fiction bookshops on Rodeo Drive.

Shopping is shopping, which is another way of saying "dreadfully dull". On Rodeo Drive you can make that "insanely expensive in a dreadfully dull way." For example, Julia looked longingly at a thousand-dollar handbag. I'd seen her use a handbag twice in all the time I'd know her, plus she admitted that she didn't have a dress that matched the bag, so she'd have to buy that too. Personally I thought she had so many dresses already that she must be able to match every conceivable color of handbag, but apparently not. I kept my opinion to myself (I did a lot of that today). That's just one of MANY examples of lunacy throughout the day. Given all the lunacy and the topic's dreadful dullness, I'll restrict my comments about the day to just a few points.

The girls had a GREAT time. I enjoyed that part of it. Lunch was nice too. The vast majority of the stores were extremely boring. It was a never-ending succession of: womenswear, menswear, jewelry, perfume, and handbag stores. Over and over again.

To my surprise, there was one store I quite enjoyed. Even more surprising, it was a women's clothing store. It had some very sexy, animal-skin patterned clothing. Carol bought a wrap-around tie top with a leopard skin pattern. It was VERY thin and left the perfect amount of cleavage exposed - pretty much all of it - so it was VERY sexy. I had difficulty keeping a brotherly expression on my face and drool off my chin.

One outfit worth mentioning, because it'll come up again in a few days, is the pair of black jeans and black T-shirt that Alexis chose and I bought from the same, drool-inducing store. The top was shaped exactly the same as a T-shirt, but the fabric wasn't cotton, that's for sure. I don't know what it was, but it was thinner, glistened, had an embossed texture repeated all over it, and was a damn sight sexier than any T-shirt I've ever seen. Down the left side of the front was a long, vertical dark brown leather panel, with the designer's name, "Roberto Cavalli", written sideways in stylized tiger stripes.

The back was the interesting part, which is a VERY unusual opinion for me to have about a girl's top! There was a wide, downward pointing triangle cut out of the shirt, high on the back, just below the shoulders. The horizontal side of the triangle went across most of the width of the T-shirt (about twelve inches), with the bottom corner of the triangle centered on the spine only about three inches below the top side, so it was a very shallow, very wide, downward pointing triangle. It was bordered all around by an inch-wide strip of the same dark brown leather as the front panel. There was a second triangle cutout two-thirds of the way down the back of the T-shirt, identical to the one above, other than necessarily being less wide.

There was a third triangle, identical to the two above it other than its again being horizontally smaller by the same factor. The VERY interesting fact about the third triangle was its location: it was cut out of the back of the jeans, just below the belt line, and the cut exposed enough skin that the top of Alexis' butt cheeks and a decent (cough, cough) length of her butt crack were clearly visible. It looked HOT when she walked! It was brazenly rude and sexy, and at the same time done with class. The three triangles visually 'worked' to somehow create an appealing effect even without the sexuality of it. Both Alexis and I loved it on first sight.

I got plenty of sightings of it, because it was important to get exactly the right size, especially for the T-shirt as it couldn't be worn tucked in at the back. Nor could it be worn not tucked in, because bare flesh just above the jeans would have spoiled the look. There was a clamping arrangement built into the back of the jeans to hold the bottom of the shirt, thus the shirt couldn't be too long or too short, or it wouldn't hang right. The outfit worked wonderfully and suited Alexis' personality perfectly. There was never any doubt that I was going to buy it for her, despite the price.

Pat and Katelin each found something they wanted for their "little" gift from me, each of the three "little" gifts costing me several hundred dollars. Next time someone wants a souvenir, I'll buy them a postcard. Pat's and Katelin's purchases were both things they could show their mothers, so they didn't do much for me. They were extremely happy, and I guess that's the most important thing. Alexis could show her outfit to her mother too, but Vicky (Alexis' mom) was obviously at the permissive end of the spectrum of mothers.

Julia, Carol and Ava - OF COURSE! - had three FANTASTIC times spending their $10,000. Ava was slow to start, not really believing she was included, but Julia and Carol quickly corrected Ava's reluctance, and soon all three girls were giddy with spending-frenzy excitement. Despite their euphoria, they didn't forget the basic discipline of shopping. First they scouted ALL the stores on Rodeo Drive, all six girls making much discussed mental lists about all the possible things to spend the $10,000 on. Unlike my car scouting, the girls didn't need to record the clothing information in their cellphones, because girls have HIGHLY trained memories for this stuff.

They were regretful that they didn't have enough time to do another scouting pass through all the most interesting stores. I expressed sympathy, that being a good alternative to my true feelings. So on the second pass, the money started flying out. To give them credit, they kept a very good track on the remaining balance of their three budgets; a third each, to Ava's amazed delight. Ava stopped a little under her budget, Carol and Julia both didn't hesitate to go over theirs, but they paid the difference with Julia's credit card, Carol promising to pay her back. Prof had originally suggested the $10,000 sum to me, and I certainly hadn't thought it'd be inadequate, but - silly us - it certainly had been.

I would normally have said that clothing shopping had to be the most boring activity imaginable, but surely accompanying someone else while they clothes shopped has to be even worse (I certainly thought it was). Yet the three extra girls all had a ball looking at all the stores and contributing their input to the spending of $10,000, even if it wasn't on them. Actually damned near another $2,000 was on them! Something I absolutely hadn't intended, but it got away from me. Who would've thought that jokingly offering to buy a pair of black jeans for Alexis would have ended up costing me nearly $2,000?

For my three girls the only slightly sour note to the day was their inability to find much to buy for me that I would accept. The, "that I would accept" condition was important, because they could easily have spent tens of thousands on me if I'd let them. There was a surprising amount of menswear available, many pieces of which I was told were perfect for me. My subtle answer was, "Thank you very much, but you're insane. I'm a 15-year old boy who's still growing. I have absolutely no need for a suit costing several thousand dollars, and by the time I do, I will have long since outgrown it. It'll be thrown away before I wear it even once. Ditto for horrendously expensive shoes, and considerably less polite than ditto for your showing me any more male handbags." There was a truly amazing number of gay handbags for sale. No wonder LA is called the "City of Sin".

In desperation to buy me something, they even suggested jewelry, trying to encourage me by saying, "Bling is very fashionable with guys these days."

"Yeah right! The day I become a Black, gangsta rapper out of an LA ghetto, then you can buy me bling." [I mentioned this because the facetious description of myself turned out to be amazingly prophetic, as I only got one word wrong.] "The only thing I want you to buy for me is very small bikinis, because I have very simple and unselfish pleasures."

They still expressed frustration from time to time, especially Julia, so I tried another approach: "I honestly don't have any objection to you buying me something, but it has to be useful. Buying me REALLY expensive useless stuff just because you think you have to balance what you're spending on yourselves is silly. I get enormous value from you in ways that I haven't got a hope of repaying in the same way, such as your and your parents' advice to me. This day is my way of repaying some of that, so you're not under an obligation to match it dollar for dollar, and I'd be very unimpressed if you foolishly bought me a $350 gold-plated toenail clipper, or a belt that costs more than ten whole cows." Not that I knew what cows cost, but it sounded good.

Between Julia's accepting that argument and my strident refusals, I ended up getting only three shirts, one pair of pants and one jacket. All of which I had to admit were very nice. A couple of the shirts made me look "funky", according to the salesman. I've been 'funkless' my whole life, but apparently not in those shirts, the salesman assured me.

We headed back to the hotel as soon as I could talk the girls into it, which was moments after the last store closed. All of us went up to our suite, including the extra girls because their bags and shopping were there - Julia had gotten the stores to send most of our purchases to our room. For the prices we were paying, they could damn well deliver.

The suite was GORGEOUS: two bedrooms, both with beds big enough for the four of us; a huge bathroom with a hot tub and shower, both big enough for all seven of us; and a living room. It OOZED luxury from every direction. The girls went gaga, and I probably went at least ga myself.

Pat commented, "Wow, I hope our room's like this."

Julia quickly answered, "It's not. You're booked into an ordinary room. Mark gets the best. Sometimes you're close enough to him to benefit, like flying down on the luxury jet or the meal we'll be having shortly; but other times you're not so close, such as your room not being as good as this one or your not going to the concert. You're still miles ahead of all the girls having boring weekends back at home. They're going to be very envious when they learn about your being on this trip."

"You can say that again," agreed Katelin. "How are you going to tell them?"

"I haven't decided yet, but it should be done in a fun way. Let's talk about it over dinner."

Dinner was only an hour and a half away, so the girls had to cut their conversation short in order to start getting ready. Alexis, Katelin and Pat extracted their luggage and shopping bags from the larger pile, then went down to their room.

I was ready in fifteen minutes because I'm a guy, and also so I could watch the girls get repeatedly dressed and undressed as they tried on many of their purchases, which I guess is a repetition of the first reason. I took the opportunity to arrange for the hotel to send a female to periodically check on the three girls we'd be leaving in their room (Julia corrected me, to say they'd be in our room).

Carol and Julia were wearing their "little black dresses," the same ones they'd worn on the date with Cindy (I am very aware that means they had no reason to try on most of their purchases again. Since when did "reason" apply to girls' shopping?). I LOVED Carol's dress. In Ava's presence I couldn't express my appreciation the way I wanted - by standing behind her and sliding my hands onto her breasts under the thin straps - but I did give her a wide-smiling thumbs-up gesture when Ava had her back to me.

Julia had 'suggested' that part of Ava's buying today should be a dress suitable for tonight. When Ava saw Julia's and Carol's dresses, Ava said, "Thank goodness you talked me into buying my dress. The one I packed looks like a housecoat compared to your two."

The one Ava had bought certainly didn't look like a housecoat though. At the time Julia had talked Ava into buying it, Julia had said, "Mark's girls have to be able to dress sexily, from bikinis all the way to eveningwear, so you need to get something special, Ava."

I thought that specific instance of Julia's clothes-shopping logic was impeccable, and I was very happy when Ava bought a sexy dress too, so all three of my girls were looking at least absolutely gorgeous, and in one case, spectacular.

Ava asked me, "What do you think about Carol's dress being so sexy?"

"I think it's fantastic."

Excitedly Ava exclaimed, "I knew it! I knew you would."

"Sure. I'm very pleased that she has so much self-confidence. It's wonderful that Julia has helped Carol blossom so much."

"Oh."

While we waited for the other girls to arrive, I had many opportunities to use NP to lightly stroke the sides of Carol's breasts, where they weren't covered by the strap that ran over them. Carol enjoyed that, especially when Ava was out of sight of one breast so I could pull that strap to the side to NP the nipple from across the room.

When the other three girls came up, they looked at my three, and each of the newcomers said something like, "Wow!", followed by lots of gushing back and forth. My three were all dressed better than the others, which I'm positive Julia thought was exactly how it should be.

Once the gushing sounded like it was nearly over, I held the door open, saying, "Ladies, shall we walk to the restaurant. I'm quite hungry and I've had a VERY hard day." It was perhaps a little unkind, but I'd had a HARD day! Truly; it had been tough on me. Good to see the girls have so much fun, but it'd gone on for HOURS, so my nerves were a little raw.

They got the hint, and said they'd be ready to go almost immediately, just needing a few last minute makeup, hair and other essential checks and adjustments, then some photographs of each other and around the suite. It only took twenty minutes, which was miraculous.

The restaurant was very nice (if you didn't look at the prices; horrendous if you did. A restaurant that charged that much in Corvallis wouldn't get ANY customers). The service was attentive, as restaurant service usual is when Carol wears that dress. The other girls were looking great, but it was clear where the waiters' eyes were most often looking. I had plenty of food, as all six girls gave me samples off their plates; that being one of the two main advantages of having six girlfriends.

One of the topics of conversation was how to break the news to the rest of the school that I was rich. Julia didn't want me to brag about it myself, nor did she want to do it before Wednesday, so I'd have the 11th grade pipeline date without their knowing about my wealth. Various ideas were discussed, but we settled on the way that Alexis was begging for. She was going to come to school on Wednesday wearing her new outfit. It was a pretty safe bet that everyone in the class would notice it. She'd casually mention that she'd gotten it on Rodeo Drive during the weekend. Which led to another pretty safe bet: that EVERY girl in the class would want a LOT more information. Alexis would happen to have some printed out photographs from the weekend with her, and would pass those around. That'd nicely do the job of letting the school know that I was rich.

We were using my phone to record this weekend for posterity because the girls didn't have any spare time to worry about cameras. I knew from reading my phone's manual that I could unload the photos to a computer, but I'd never done any photo transferring like that before. I mentioned that to Julia, who reassured me, "It'll be easy, just like an ordinary digital camera." Which I'd also never used, but presumably Julia had, so I'd make sure she was with me when I did it.

After dinner we strolled back to our room. Carol got quickly changed into something more complete. She explained, "I can't do ANY sudden moves in that other dress, let alone dancing around at a concert."

Personally I wouldn't have minded her dancing around in it, and there were probably a few million other guys in LA who wouldn't have minded either. Actually, judging from what I'd seen in some of the stores earlier today, a considerably lower proportion of guys than should've been the case.

Julia gave Alexis, Katelin and Pat a bit of a lecture, the central theme of which was, "Don't mess-up your relationship with Mark by misbehaving in any way," then we left them to enjoy the luxury of our much better room. Theirs didn't even have a hot tub in it; how primitive was that!

On the topic of things our room had, it had a safe, which now contained my excess cash. I thought the idea of having a safe in our new house might be handy and quietly mentioned it to Julia.

Not only had she already thought of it, it'd been almost the first thing she'd thought of when mentally listing what we needed. She whispered back, "You have secrets."

Our limo was waiting, and we headed off to the "pop" concert. I'd discovered over dinner that Justin Timberlake was not a country and western singer as I'd thought. Apparently he was a "pop" singer. Not "popular" enough for me to know about him, but that meant approximately nothing, because I have about the same interest in music as I have in football, although it had occurred to me that I could become a pretty good piano player, what with my having twenty two fingertips (assuming one mind remained on duty).

We had VERY good seats (the air charter company always bought the best, knowing their clients wouldn't want merely average seats), and the girls had a great time. As far as I could tell, Justin Timberlake's main appeal was his sexiness, which didn't quite have the same effect on me as it did on the girls. I enjoyed my girls enjoying his show though, so that was good. I didn't actually dislike his music, and the show did have a superb crowd atmosphere, so it was okay. There was even one of his songs that I quite liked. It was about love and sex, a hint that doesn't narrow it down at all. All things considered - especially my girls' happiness - I enjoyed the experience. I'd never been to a concert even one-tenth the size of this one, or one-tenth as professionally staged, so it was a fun new experience for me. I joked to myself that I should get used to being surrounded by thousands of excited, screaming girls, in case Julia is understating the effect of my being rich on girls' hormones.

On the limo ride back, the girls were still totally buzzed, which I hoped would last until bedtime.

Alexis and Co. had been semi-well-behaved girls: they were still in our room, but when all the girls started gushing back and forth about Justin-sigh-Timberlake, it was soon apparent that the stay-at-home girls were tipsy.

Alexis produced a half-empty bottle of whiskey, declaring, "Don't worry, I didn't buy it through room service. I brought it with me."

She'd somehow overlooked mentioning it earlier, but they'd behaved well enough so I didn't care about the underage drinking when I was meant to be responsible for them. That they'd used the hot tub and were now dressed only in hotel robes that were having 'terrible' trouble staying closed didn't do their case any harm either. Three girls don't all have their robes gape open by accident, so they were more than merely tipsy, they were "delightfully tipsy," and well on their way to making me very glad I'd brought them on this trip.

My girls were also in a very good mood from the concert and Justin-sigh-Timberlake, so things rapidly became more and more interesting. My plan had been to have sex with my three core girls, let them fall asleep, then visit the other girls in their room; but plans have to be reconsidered when a room full of girls all decide they're way overdressed, and then collectively decide that so am I.